The key phrase is common sense. First and foremost, do not use email privately to an extent that annoys others, and you should never use your AU email commercially.

AU IT can, if necessary, gain access to your mailbox if there is a need to find a work-related email in your absence. They will of course tell you that they have done so. If you use your mailbox for private purposes, do place the private emails in a folder/directory structure named "Private" – then IT support will not look there.

Contracts, legally binding emails, and other documents that must be recorded may not be stored in email accounts.

Remember that when you use your AU email you represent the university. Naturally, you enjoy complete freedom of speech, but you should not make statements on behalf of the university, or appear to be doing so, unless you are authorized to do so and you should not, through your behaviour, bring the university into disrepute.

Find the main decisions regarding the shared email and calendar system and the remaining guidelines below.

Who gets a personal email account?

In order to get an email account, you need to be registered in the AU Identity Management System with an unambiguous ID (AU ID).

These people will get a personal email account:

Permanent staff members (academic staff, technical and administrative staff, PhD's, STIP) will automatically receive a personal email account and email address. The email account will follow the person throughout the entire connection with Aarhus University.

Part-time and temporary employees (for example, part-time lecturers, teaching assistants and student workers) are not automatically assigned an email account. Email accounts will be created for these employees if so requested by their immediate supervisor.

Students will get an email account in post.au.dk.

Especially for persons who are both students at AU and employed by AU:

If a person is both a student and a staff member (e.g. a student worker or a staff member on a postgraduate course) there will be set up two email accounts. Students and staff members have different rights and it is important that the two roles can be seperated.

All students email is sent to post.au.dk. Emails to post.au.dk is basically private adn AU are not allowed to read the emails. Additionally, AU will not send confidential emails to post.au.dk.

All staff email is basically the employer's and the employer is allowed to read emails in accordance with certain guidelines.

An example: When a student worker sends an email as a staff member it is important that the receiver is able to see that the email is send as a staff member and not as a student.

One sender address, more receiver addresses

The shared email and calendar system, Microsoft Exchange, is only able to handle one sender address per email account, and a person is only allowed to have one email account.

All emails will be sent from the assigned email address. By appointment, emails can be received on any number of email alias.

Please note that it is possible for Outlook users to create and choose different email signatures to be inserted in the bottom of an email.

No forwarding

To a great extent, AU uses the email and calendar system as a case handling tool. This means that there can be sensitive and confidential personal data in the emails that are circulating AU, and AU is therefore obliged to obey the personal data protection act including the security declaration.

This means that you are not allowed to automatically forward emails from your AU email to email addresses outside the university such as gmail. Sending emails from e.g. your gmail account to your AU email, however, is allowed.

This only applies to staff members. AU does not send personal information via email to students, and therefore the rule about forwarding does not apply to students.

Size of your AU email

There is no upper limit of the size of an AU email account.

There is an upper limit when sending a single email:

With Outlook and webmail you can send files up to 50 MB. However, please be aware that many cannot receive that much.

You can attach up to 500 files.

If you use Mac there can be a much lower limit of 30 MB when you send files. This is coursed by Mac using a different encoding.

Access to AU email via mobile units

Support is only available to a limited range of mobile phones, smartphones, etc. This includes iPhone/iPad, a selection of Android phones, and phones with Windows 7.

Only mobile units supporting Microsoft "ActiveSync" may be connected to the shared email and calendar system.

If you are unsure whether your smartphone, tablet, etc. is supported, please ask your local IT support.

By using ActiveSync, AU IT is able to live up to the AU's security policy.

The right to look in other people's calendars

It has been decided that all staff members' calendars must be open.

This means that all staff members can see the following:

In Outlook 2016 and webmail: Time of the meeting/appointment, place and subject.

In Outlook 2016 (Mac): Time of the meeting/appointment (can only be viewed under the tab 'Scheduling Assistant' in a meeting request).

A private appointment

If an appointment should not be visible to all, you will have to mark it 'private'.

This means that the topic, place, content of the appointment, list of participants and attachments of the appointment are not visible to others. However, they can see that you are busy.

Please be aware if your send a notification of a meeting to others, which you mark as private. Participants of the meeting can remove the private mark. This happens e.g. if you book a room for the meeting. The room will automatically remove the private mark and the topic of the meeting will be visible in the calendar of the room. If you a room for a private meeting, you should remember to use a 'neutral' topic.

Access to the booking of resources

Resources (conference rooms, equipment, and cars) are used for calendar management / booking.

Booking of resources is available for any staff member at AU. This means, among other things, that units do not have ressources which are available to that particular unit only. Others may book them too.

There may be restrictions in using the individual resources. For example: "You may reserve a car, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have access to the key".)

Additionally, there may be additional costs involved when using a resource. This will be handled outside the shared email and calendar system.

Filing function

The shared email and calendar system offers a filing function for staff members with large mailboxes or many emails. Your local IT support can set this up by appointment.

Procedure when a staff member transfers within AU

The staff member keeps his or her personal email account.

If the staff member moves to a unit with another email domain (after @), he or she will be asigned a new email address automatically and the old email address will become a receiver address.

The staff member will receive an email with information about the change of email address.

Procedure when a staff member resigns

The mailbox will be automatically deactivated when the employee is disabled in "medarbejderstamkortet". Once an email account has been cancelled, it is no longer possible for the user to log on and use the account. A standard auto reply will be sent out.

After a "closing down period", the email account will be deleted and it will no longer be possible to restore anything. It will not be possible to maintain an auto reply on a deleted email account either.

The "closing down period" is 6 months. This periode can, special cases, be extended to 12 months.

It's not allowed to reuse Email addresses of former employees.

Before contacting IT support

Please check serviceinfo.au.dk to see if the problems you are experiencing, are due to maintenance or operational problems at the AU systems.